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I had a good offer on a Kyosho USA-1, but I was very hesitant because these trucks aren't known for being in great condition. It was a good deal so I took the leap.

Well the truck arrived yesterday and I'm truly impressed. The body is in excellent shape, not a single crack, just missing the engine and a mirror. Not crazy about the all black paint but whatever, the decals make up for it.



The previous owner really went all out.

It's got a sassy chassis (I believe this is a sassy), thorpe diffs, thorpe dogbones and axles, aluminum steering and a center mounted 1/4 scale servo that can turn all 4 tires with the truck standing still. It also came with a pair of green monster motors, and overall the truck is really clean for it's age.

Nice find and the motor shows up eBay from time to time

That's a great truck. Looks like the weak points have been addressed (drivetrain and steering).

The only weak spot left on the truck that I can find are the knuckles but Burns aluminum knuckles are supposed to be a direct fit. Gonna look into that.

sgirouard wrote:The only weak spot left on the truck that I can find are the knuckles but Burns aluminum knuckles are supposed to be a direct fit. Gonna look into that.

Let me check on that for you. I have the USA 1 parts (electric) and some burns parts as well.

Sassy chassis it is, nice find. Build it up to a really good runner?

Yeah. I already have a couple guys wanting to trade for it. But its so nice, I might have to keep it. Put it along side my dual brushless clod project I'm working on

Keep in mind, it's mid project

Yeah, looks like he did spring for some fantastic upgrades. These trucks had many weak points and he got almost all of them.

Can you post a pic of the inside and how the center servo is connected to steer the front and back? I just picked up a Double Dare and the stock steering set-up is one of the dumbest I've ever seen. It looks like your truck has some kind of modified turnbuckles on the upper arms?

I love the look of my Double Dare but performance wise...it blows

Pretty sure those are stock uppers on a USA-1. I think the rest of the series was narrow and fixed.

I always wanted one of these trucks growing up.Nice score...

I ended up selling the USA-1 to fund some other projects. I don't hold onto vehicles unless I'm going to run them and I was terrified of breaking the USA-1 so it went to a collector.

To answer your question about the steering. The sassy chassis was a completely different steering system than the stock. The stock was the same as the Double Dare. Where the servo is mounted at the front and used a pin to move the steering "block". Then it had a metal rod shaped like an elongated U to rotate a duplicate steering block in the back. You got about 25% steering to one side and almost none to the other.

This chassis had the servo mounted mid chassis, with a rod on top and bottom (similar to the stock clod servo design) but the linkages went to aluminum bell cranks. The steering was a HUGE improvement. With this chassis it turned in about a 4-5 foot diameter circle.

The Double Dare and the USA-1 were basically duplicate trucks (minor differences) except the USA-1 had long suspension parts and larger tires.

I found this pic